


Figment of Imagination

by Angst_Distribution_Service (Mister_Fox)



Series: Fox's Horrorween Entries [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, He'll get through it, Horror, Kisuke'll be okay, Kisuke's just super unlucky, Monsters, Paranoia, Self-Doubt, Stalking, implied - Freeform, yes the monsters are real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27308029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Angst_Distribution_Service
Summary: Things go bump in the night. Some people just pay too much attention.
Relationships: Shihouin Yoruichi & Urahara Kisuke
Series: Fox's Horrorween Entries [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993159
Kudos: 16





	Figment of Imagination

“Did you hear that?” Kisuke says, craning his head to try and figure out the source of the sound.

“Hear what?” Yoruichi asks, half-opening one eye to glance at him. She was half-napping before he spoke up, but doesn’t seem to be too irritated by the disturbance.

“The screech.”

It had been strange and piercing, the cadence entirely unfamiliar - it didn’t sound human or animal or even Hollow. It was far off, too, but he couldn’t tell how far.

And it is entirely at odds with the warm, sunny day, the soft window rustling the branches of the tree under which they’re resting.

A noble clan heir is a busy person, and Kisuke is busy with his studies and training - he has been tested to be unfit for the Onmi, but as a future member of the Second, and Yoruichi’s bodyguard, he doesn’t really have that much time to truly _rest_. Even so, Yoruichi makes sure to carve out some time for the two of them to rest together on days with such pleasant weather.

“What screech?”

Kisuke is about to answer when the sound comes again. It’s closer, louder this time. Loud enough that Yoruichi should hear it for sure, now that she is awake. But her expression is still questioning, which is answer enough.

She can’t hear it.

Well, Kisuke is quite tired. He’s probably just hearing things.

The sound does not repeat, and he permits himself to doze off in the warm, peaceful afternoon.

* * *

He hears the strange sounds again a whole moon cycle later. Shrieking, almost _laughing_ sounds, but too far away to tell which one it is - especially as it is nothing like what a human throat should make.

Kisuke pulls the covers tighter over himself, trying to make himself more comfortable.

Whatever it is, it’s too far away to hurt him, or even bother to come over here. He’s done nothing to them, after all.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, comforting himself. _Whatever those things are, they’re interested in each other. What do they care about a shinigami like him?_

* * *

Was there something behind him? Kisuke turns around. He was sure he saw a shadow.

But there’s nothing.

Maybe it was a passing operative.

He follows where he thinks it might have gone, but there’s nothing — just a faint scent of blood on the air.

* * *

He dreams of teeth and claws and rending flesh.

* * *

“Did someone bring hounds onto the grounds?” Kisuke asks a passing guard. “I heard growling when passing through the grounds just now.”

The man stares at him, expression thoughtful. Kisuke is not well-liked by most of the higher tier guards, who come from noble lines vassal to the Shihouin. This man is a rare exception. If his fellows have brought hounds and did not train them to ignore Kisuke, this one wouldn’t think it a funny joke to then set those hounds loose and let them chase Kisuke all around the grounds. Again.

“There are no hounds. I did not hear anything - perhaps you were casting your senses elsewhere?”

That is strange. Kisuke was certain there was something.

But the guard is not lying.

Well, he has more important things to do. He will think about this later.

* * *

“Is someone there?” Kisuke asks the darkness. He’s stayed in his office far too long; everyone else should be gone.

Except, he doesn’t _feel_ like he’s alone.

Perhaps he should retire earlier. Exhaustion never improves one’s senses.

* * *

He feels followed. He’s not _confident_ that he is. But he feels like he is.

Kisuke hears the half-sounds of held-back breaths in the darkness at night. Sees strange-edged shadows that are always too far to investigate, shadows that always change when he looks at them again later. Smells the faint reek of death and rot, not of a recently dead animal in some wall, but something _else_.

But he did just start working in the headquarters of the Onmi, he reminds himself. Perhaps he is merely not used to the atmosphere, the strange and subtle habits of the operatives, the trail of death that follows them.

Mere paranoia about being surrounded by people who are trained to be just as stealthy as he is - but with the intent to kill, not guard.

* * *

The month-long gaps between the incidents turn to weeks, turn to days, turn to hours.

Whatever is making the noises - the many things making the noises, they _are_ following him.

* * *

Kisuke twitches, hand drifting to Benihime, as the soft hissing close by continues. It’s coming from something alive, or at least independently mobile. The scent of it indicates that calling it _alive_ might be far too generous.

He braces himself and turns around the corner where he can hear the animalistic sound.

There’s nothing — just an empty corridor.

As is always is.

Enough is enough.

* * *

Kisuke tests what he hears, thoroughly. Wanders through places with lots of people, watches them, their movements and head titles and microexpressions.

He marks down the results of the last test, his observations of the reactions of the shinigami in the cantina to the soft, clacking footsteps following him around.

No reactions, not even a turn of the head, not a twitch in response the sounds of something inhuman, possibly even Hollow, stalking Kisuke.

No one, _no_ _a single person_ can hear or see what he can, no matter what setting, circumstance, or time of day.

Shrieking, ripping, tearing noises come from just outside his room, but Kisuke ignores them with practised ease, now. After all, they’re not real. The shadows that Kisuke sometimes catches dancing around the corners as the monsters fight each other are about as genuine as a shape in the clouds.

The fact that no one else can see them, no one else can hear them, makes it certain that they’re just hallucinations. Persistent hallucinations at that, but there are no other errors in his perception, so as distracting as they may be, they are harmless.

He gets ready to sleep.

It would be really lovely if those figments of his imagination could _keep it down_.

He is so tired.

* * *

The not-real creature behind him - the one that stinks of death and ash and rot - giggles shrilly. It’s a warped sound that chills his blood and tells him that he must flee. It is a sound that he is familiar with.

But it’s a harmless — just an auditory malfunction.

So Kisuke ignores it, focusing on his paperwork.

Sharp pain blooms in his left ankle, icy claws scraping against his flesh, a triumphant shriek, and a whoosh, and he is alone in his room, clutching his leg.

He moves, tries to get better lighting to look at his leg.

There’s no wound, no bleeding that would be going on if a monster attacked him. He isn’t hurt.

Well of course he isn’t hurt. The creature isn’t real; the pain isn’t _real_. Which is why trying to heal it doesn’t do anything to reduce it - because there is nothing to heal. The ache is imaginary.

* * *

The skin of his ankle is mottled green and purple the next day, and walking is painful. Still, it’s nothing more than an extension of his visual and auditory and olfactory hallucinations.

Well. He doesn’t work in the field, now that Yoruichi has promoted him to be warden of the Maggot’s Nest, despite the protestation of everyone who was asked for their opinion. A lowly shinigami, just a member of the Second, the part that deals with paperwork and security and resources, not a _proper_ member of the Onmitsukido.

This isn’t… this shouldn’t be a problem for him, not when he doesn’t need to have the perfect senses of someone who needs to fight regularly.

Still, he ought to see if he can get himself pain resistance training sessions. Just so that he will not act _off_ should the hallucinations happen at an inopportune moment.

* * *

The painful, bruising bites persist.

It feels like it’s not fair, that something that isn’t real should hurt quite as much as it does, more than real bruises of the same kind do.

But it’s not like he can die from this, and he’s tried everything he could think of to fix himself.

He just needs to wait out each episode. That’s the only way forward.

One by one. Kisuke can do it.

He’s just managed to get Bankai and get promoted to Captain, after all.

Some measly, daily, ache-inducing hallucinations are _not_ going to get to him.

And they _are_ hallucinations - he’s proved it, again, by trying to use Benihime to defend herself. He struck where the monsters should have been while they bit him, and nothing changed. No impact, no blood, no screams of pain.

The monsters and pain are imaginary. He’s fine.

If they were real, at least one other person would have noticed them by this point. Would have responded to them.

Would have been attacked by them.

* * *

The pain isn’t real, but it’s bad enough that he has to catch himself, again and again, as his body reflexively tries to flee upon hearing the warning sounds, notices the nearing stench.

* * *

Indeed, if no one can see him, it wouldn’t hurt too much to indulge his panic, and flee? The pain isn’t real, but it hurts, and a good run is not exactly _bad_ for his health. Plus, doubling over in pain in front of his subordinates is worse than the mild risk of them seeing him randomly break into shunpo for no apparent reason.

Yes. Yes, he’ll run, if no one can see him do so.

He’s fine. He’s not afraid.

Just doesn’t like being hurt.

* * *

Kisuke is breathing hard, throat and lungs aching from when he lost the proper breathing rhythm as he had sped through the streets and then the forests, the harsh, growling exhales following him just too far to see, just close enough to hear, close enough to tell him he is pursued.

It’s not real, it’s not true, but no one had been looking, no one had been close enough to see him run, terrified, from _nothing_. He knows it’s all delusions and paranoid. There is _nothing_ that is genuinely hunting him. But sometimes, he can’t stop acting like it. Can’t stop behaving like he is in grave danger.

Did he lose it? He can’t hear it right now.

Fake as they are, as much training as he has to deal with pain, there’s something exceedingly terrible about the way those fangs sink into his flesh when he is too slow, laving fake-bruises and fake-pain and fake-limping behind.

The wind turns, and he can smell blood and rot and soil, just before something shrieks with laughter right behind him.

He runs.

It will get tired, will leave him, and he can go home, unbothered by it.

He just needs to run for long enough.

Then he might get a reprieve of a few days.

Please, someone, let him rest.

He is so tired.

* * *

The dislocated limbs and hairline bone fractures are a little much, but they’re not real. They hurt like they’re real, but they’re not. They’re not.

He’s not hunted.

He’s fine. He’s _fine._

* * *

They’re constant, now. The giggling shrieks and roars and howls, the scratch of ragged claws and the shift of rotting for and the clinking of glass bones.

It is hard, even with all his practice, to not turn his head at every sound, get ready to flee the moment he can hear something get ready to pounce, to bite and tear and break yet another bone. It gets a little worse, a little harder, as the bruises and shallow cuts and dislocated bones-turned-broken inch closer to his heart and chest.

He can no longer quell his shivering, his twitching, the way his eyes flicker around every room.

It’s not real.

Knowing that doesn’t make him any less terrified.

* * *

Kisuke straightens his clothing a little, waiting outside the examination room.

Unohana-taichou personally does most of the physical exams for her fellow Captains. He underlings are all reliable in terms of confidentiality, of course, but there is a multitude of reasons that she rarely delegated the yearly check-up even to her lieutenant.

He’s hallucinating bruises all over his legs and arms where the creatures played with him, tearing at him and throwing him between each other. There’s a rather _nasty_ one on his ankle, forcing a limp that he can barely hide. But as always, the application of kaido does nothing.

Perhaps he could ask Unohana-taichou about hallucinations? He has to admit, the situation is getting quite dire.

* * *

“A medical exam is not meant to double as a healing session,” Unohana-taichou says, her serene smile faltering as she looks at Kisuke, undressed for the physical exam. “I had been under the impression that you are quite skilled at healing, but unless you were engaged in an altercation outside my office, you ought to have had the time to get these bruises and cuts healed.” Her tone turns softer, less chiding. “I know you are a new captain, but I assure you, health is more important that your paperwork.”

Abruptly, the world feels like it’s made of glass, fragile and strange and off.

“You can see them?” Kisuke’s voice cracks on the last word. If she is seeing them, if she is _seeing_ them- “They’re real? It’s all- real?”

His breaths are coming faster, panic threatening to drown him.

Real. If his injuries are real, then, then the fangs and claws that made them are real, and then the owners of those are _real_ , and, and-

He’s shaking with terror, his knees failing.

Hands catch him, help him to sink gently to the floor rather than fall over.

“I have to run,” Kisuke whispers to himself. “I have to run. I have to _run,_ they’re so close, so _close-_ ”

He can’t stop, can’t snap out of his terror, because he’s wasted time, so much time, his hunters are so close, and he should have run and run and run-

It was real. It was all real, and the only imaginary thing, the only thing that was a figment of his imagination was the safety he thought he had.

There is an unfamiliar splayed hand on his chest, a strange kido forcing him to breathe regularly, calmly.

“I am afraid running will not help, Urahara-san. Those things can not be outrun,” Unohana-taichou says gently. “But there are wards against them, to keep them away. And they will lose interest in you, given time. Everything is okay. It will be fine.”

Those words.

How often did he tell himself those words?

She wouldn’t lie to him, he knows.

But he just can’t believe that anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> So much of this is inspired by my fear that, uh, I am actually perceiving things correctly when my brain is being a shit, and the things are Bad. And that, uh, when I am clear-headed and know they aren't, I'm actually just deluding myself.
> 
> Kisuke, just in the wrong place at the wrong time, with just too-good eyes and ears and nose.  
> At least the monsters whose attention he caught are such long-lived creatures, that decades of toying with their prey is perfectly normal for them.


End file.
